What You Carry With You
by Kalira69
Summary: Yama wakes from a nightmare of a memory shaken, and Harlock is there to offer comfort and help him back to sleep.


Written for a Mousie: request for (AU? Unsure if this constitutes that) fall out from Yama time as prisoner of Gaia - as angsty or feel good as you want

There's a smidge of angst but mostly in the hurt/comfort guise. Set in a continuity where Harlock and Yama became a couple after the events of the movie, and some time afterwards Yama was captured by the Gaia Coalition and thrown into prison - necessitating his rescue by his Captain.

* * *

 _"Where do you think you're going?"_

 _"Little **traitor**."_

 _Slammed hard against the wall of the cell, Yama couldn't voice any defence of himself, the breath knocked out of him. His shoulder blade throbbed from the impact and he was struggling to get air back into his lungs even before the big man who had thrown him shoved one hand against his throat._

 _Yama's eyes widened. He fought to speak, but the pressure against his trachea was increasing. "I- I didn't-" he forced out on a weak breath._

 _"Because of **you** turning on us half the flagship fleet was destroyed!"_

 _Yama's eyes flicked to the man who had spoken. He was grinding one of his fists into the palm of the other hand. One of the others was cracking his knuckles, one by one. The man pinning Yama to the wall was so close the hot breath between his bared teeth was hitting Yama's face as he made a low growling sound._

 _Part of Yama was frightened and part of him was dismissively categorising their threatening gestures and over-the-top words as showy foolishness as they continued to rail at him. Flashes rose in his memory instead of the Arcadia's crew in battle - Yattaran, gleeful as he powered through combat, in or out of his battlesuit; Kei, all willowy grace and delicacy until she began to move, plowing easily through opponents; Harlock, shadowed and intimidating without effort and as deadly and untouchable as lightning when he fought. This was . . . a childish display._

 _Yama would have protested their accusations, pointed out he had only done the right thing, but he couldn't speak any more - he could barely breathe, and the pressure increased to cut off more of his airway even as he struggled to free himself._

 _"They left him with us, do you think they'll care?" one of the other prisoners was saying to another, and Yama grimaced. The wardens might care if he was bashed up in here - or even killed - but Yama doubted it. Whatever these men had done to get themselves into a Gaia Coalition prison, they had been Gaia Coalition soldiers first, and the ones guarding the prison were likely to side with them anyway._

 _"I would."_

 _Though the other voices were raised, Harlock's quiet words cut through them easily. Yama's eyes darted to the familiar figure and his heart leapt._

 _"Yama." Harlock smiled slightly, but he didn't move, and rather than scatter and reform to face off with Harlock, Yama's attackers pressed closer to him. His air was cut off entirely and black spots flared in his vision, spreading as his boots left the floor, body suspended by the tight grip on his throat. Harlock didn't move._

 _ **No** , Yama thought, cringing, a whine building in his burning throat. **No that isn't how it was, it's not.**_

 _The thought came with a tickling sort of flutter in his chest, one that ached and pushed at him from the inside, and Yama shuddered, painfully swallowing a keen as he jerked in the grip-_

Yama jerked awake and barely kept himself from snapping bolt upright in the same movement, shuddering, tears spilling over his cheeks. One hand flew to his throat - unbruised and whole, the only thing obstructing his breathing now was . . . lingering terror from the remnants of his nightmare. He was physically unharmed. Long healed.

Yama shuddered, pressing a hand to his face and trying to block out the memory.

A warm hand sliding over his chest should perhaps have alarmed him - at least made him jump - but the touch was too familiar, soft skin and calluses and the oddly indefinable sensation of the dark matter that swirled and fluttered just beneath Harlock's skin.

"Harlock." Yama rasped.

Harlock's thumb rubbed back and forth in a gentle arc. "Nightmare, love?" he asked, and Yama's breath caught. He nodded. "Mm." Harlock drew Yama gently closer, arms curling around him protectively.

Yama shuddered and turned towards his lover, clinging to him and the offered comfort in return. Harlock's lips brushed his temple as a whine caught in his throat. Harlock was warm and solid and steady, and the oddity of the underlying thrum of dark matter Yama could feel when they were pressed so close was comfortingly familiar now. He clutched at Harlock, fingertips all but digging into his lover's side above his hip, and he hummed softly, rubbing one hand up and down Yama's back.

The melodic hum rose and shifted into words, Harlock's low, soothing voice wrapping around him. The song was one Yama had never heard save from Harlock's lips - it was an old lullaby; older even than Harlock's childhood. A song maybe no one else knew at all, any longer. Just for Yama.

Harlock brushed a kiss to Yama's brow in a pause for breath, holding him close. As Yama began to relax, Harlock's voice, smooth and melodic, melded with the reassuring hum of the Arcadia flying steadily onwards. Yama drifted sleepily as the remnants of his nightmare slowly faded away.

"It's foolish." Yama said after a while, when his heart felt a little calmer and his throat no longer ached with the echoes of an attack his body had long since recovered from.

Harlock gave a negative-sounding rumble and Yama sighed, shaking his head slightly. Awful as it had been, his capture - arrest - had been a _fluke_. One that was unlikely to be repeated even on the rare occasion he ventured off the ship, as he had then. The Gaia Coalition hadn't been tracking him - how could they? The Arcadia was untraceable.

It had just been . . . rotten luck that there had been a troop of Gaia Coalition soldiers on that remote planet when Yama had been searching it for a fern. Worse luck that he'd been spotted there, and that he'd been alone at the time.

"It is not." Harlock said softly, drawing his knuckles up and down Yama's back. "Your life has brought you through many experiences - you carry them with you, and to be troubled by them at times is only human." Harlock brushed a kiss to his cheek even as he ducked his head.

Harlock said nothing more, instead beginning to sing another soft lullaby, and Yama closed his eyes, relaxing into his lover's arms again.

Whatever Harlock said, it _was_ foolish, in a way - Yama's life was lived almost solely aboard the Arcadia. Short of being _dead_ already, it was the safest place one could possibly find, if hiding from the Gaia Coalition.

They were spread thin, as well - thinner than ever, trying to keep order in the wake of the _truth_ being shared. They had far more trouble to deal with closer to home than to try hunting the Arcadia down, even if it could have been accomplished - and the _damage_ had already been done, their message spread.

No one was coming for Yama, whatever he stood accused of and however much the soldiers who had been aboard the ships in that confrontation near Earth hated him for what he had done.

. . .and there was Harlock. Harlock who would _always_ come for him, even were he somehow to wind up in enemy hands again. Assuming Harlock ever again let him go long enough for it to happen in the first place.

Yama's lips twitched, curling up towards a smile, and he nuzzled against Harlock's shoulder. Harlock hadn't let him step foot off the ship alone - meaning without his _Captain_ shadowing him - since he had been rescued from the prison satellite . . . and didn't seem likely to do so any time soon, either.

The intense protectiveness could have felt stifling, but Yama never felt trapped or like Harlock thought he was weak. It wasn't, he thought wryly, so much different to the way it felt when Harlock slipped into the greenhouse deck while he was working. Sometimes it was actually to talk, or to see the plants, but often it was seemingly just . . . to be near him.

Yama rubbed his hand over Harlock's side fondly, feeling the thrum of his voice through his ribs as he sang. Yama smiled, resting his head against his lover's collarbone. There was no point in reminding Harlock that he was a little old for lullabies - he wouldn't really listen - so. . .

Yama burrowed a little more deeply into Harlock's embrace, his lover's arms snug around him, and let the old lullaby soothe him into a peaceful sleep.

* * *

The pre-prison break conversation with the Arcadia went something like this:  
'Tochiro I need you to ram that prison satellite'  
'AWESOME *engines rev*'  
'YAMA IS INSIDE IT SO RAM IT CAREFULLY.'  
'. . .duly noted *engines rev more quietly*'  
'actually on second thought just drop me off and I'll do it on foot'  
'but I wanted to help. . .'  
'look it's not that I don't trust you but we don't want Yama to be sucked out into space now do we? and we don't know where on the satellite he IS'  
'*sulky sad ship noises*'

The lullaby idea was actually an idle comment about half-asleep Harlock offering comfort while I was plotting this out, but I liked the thought, and my friend M did as well (and added in them being old lullabies no one else remembers).


End file.
